Thomas Sowell is one of a handful of people whose prose I genuinely envy.
He's also brilliant, of course. Milton Friedman, whom I disagree with on some things, was known for being an effective debater, but I think Sowell has even him beat: anti-capitalist platitudes don't stand a chance against the Sowell meat grinder. And now, just today -- at age 87! -- Sowell has released a brand new book: Discrimination and Disparities. I haven't read it yet, but I will. From what I've seen of it, the new book reminds me of Sowell's criminally neglected work Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?, which I've been recommending for as long as I can remember (my Amazon review from 2001 is still up). One by one, the standard platitudes about discrimination and poverty fall before Sowell's relentless statistical assault. Discrimination causes poverty? How about the Chinese minority in Southeast Asia? Discrimination against the Chinese minority is actually written into the Malaysian constitution. And yet the Chinese minority still dominate the economy. Likewise, Japanese-Americans were discriminated against so badly that 120,000 of them were forcibly relocated during World War II. Yet by 1959 they had equaled whites in income, and by 1969 were earning one-third more. Politics is the only way for a minority group to advance? To the contrary: the general pattern in the United States has been for a group to become wealthy first and only then to enter politics (if at all). The Irish, on the other hand, who placed such emphasis on political action, lagged behind other ethnic groups. The book is filled with information like this. Page by relentless page, Sowell relentlessly undermines the idea that outcome differences must be of sinister origin. If Polish-Americans are 25 years older, on average, than Puerto Ricans, is that not going to be reflected in greater work experience, higher net worth, etc.? Yet nobody even bothers to consider age differences. If half of Mexican-American women are married by age 18, but only 10 percent of Japanese-American women are, won't their life trajectories be radically different -- even if they were identical in all other traits? By the end of Sowell's book, any reasonable person has to understand how cartoonish and silly it is to expect identical outcomes from different groups across a wide range of human experiences. Of course, today the very existence of an intergroup disparity is made the subject of hysterical denunciations by campus demonstrators who aren't exactly known for appreciating subtlety. All the more reason to cheer the truly great Thomas Sowell, and the unexpected gift of his new book. -Tom Woods Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions Taxation is Theft Bot
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The video below is making the rounds on social media and claims that...
"Russian meddling is the biggest attack on our democracy since 9-11. Here's how it works and what we can do about it." The problem with over-simplified videos like this is that they are able to embed a lot of spin when they apply broad-stroke simplification to a complex issue. The listener doesn't have the time to evaluate each simplified declaration as true or false before moving on to the next talking point. This video is no different. If you’ve ever gotten into a heated argument in the comments section of Facebook, chances are you’ve come across a paid Russian troll. Really? Half my Facebook friends are Russian trolls since we get in heated arguments all the time?
In reality, Facebook has been extremely cooperative in the handing over of data to prosecute the ‘Russian trolls’. If Russian trolls were the problem, do not doubt that Facebook would have provided extensive, accurate data that would support this claim. The media would kill for confirmation of that narrative, yet no supporting data has surfaced.
Instead, the larger picture could never be more clear. The goalposts surrounding the Trump-Russia Collusion Narrative Have Moved Again
Looking at the 2016 election, it's interesting to note that their main goal wasn't exactly to help Donald Trump win the Presidency. Russia's bigger goal has always been to create chaos and distrust within American society. Wait what? See below for an inextensive, quick first few pages of Google results pushing the narrative of Collusion, Collusion, Collusion before the Mueller Indictment and the VP for Facebook Ad destroyed that narrative!
It also, doesn't stop them from lathering their base with hopes of collusion which could still occur. Why hasn't the collusion message dissipated?
Why isn't this widely reported as a scarlet letter of failure on mainstream media outlets that pushed the narrative so hard for so long? First off, it's a complex story and can't be discussed perfectly in 3 minute soundbites that steer cable TV news segments.
While there are allegations that it was actually the Democrats who colluded with the Russians, there is no concise and perfectly packaged smoking gun that proves so. Hillary didn't directly write a check to the Russians for dirt on Trump. Instead:
Without a direct smoking gun, the only outlets that will push the narrative of direct Democratic collusion with the Russians turns out to be Fox News and Alex Jones. The real crime isn't discussed by any Media outlets, though.
A dossier which was paid for by one political party was being used by the government to spy on that candidate's opponent*. This precedent is dangerous especially as we see many within the FBI organization were acting in a blatantly partisan manner while on the taxpayer's dime.
If I was Carter Page, I'd be looking into a civil suit against the government's wrongful intrusion into my 4th Amendment Rights by politically motivated federal law enforcement officials within the FBI. Who has influenced the public more? The Russians or the Media pushing a fake narrative?
I have to re-stress this point, there's not yet any evidence to prove any 'collusion' narrative. Indeed, after more than 18 months, the Comey-Mueller FBI investigations of alleged Trump collusion with Russia have come up bone dry. I stand by my previous remarks:
If evidence exists of collusion between Russia and Trump to rig or hack the election, let's get the proof out there and hang him for it. Instead, the readily apparent media goal is to pack television shows, social media timelines and article titles with half-truth reporting in order to muddy the picture. If you don't really take the time to look into the "Trump-Russia Collusion" narrative, you'll likely just assume it true based on the volume of reporting thrown in your face daily. What's increasingly apparent is that the Robert Mueller investigation, which was kickstarted in 2016 by the Trump Dossier, has turned into a continuation of the Democrats' failed 2016 political campaign against Trump, with vague insinuations of misconduct or outright criminality but never any proof. Now that the goalposts have shifted, I urge you to take every opportunity to point out that we were lied to and the media should have zero credibility going forward. How do we go back and tell every person who read the previous list of articles, or quickly scrolled past them in their social media timeline that they were patently false and created with an agenda in mind? We can't. Those people went on living their lives unable to hold an adult conversation on the topic because they've been effectively influenced. We're never able to right the wrong that has taken place. This is the real crime. Hundreds of millions of Americans read headlines or quickly browsed articles and walked away from that interaction knowing that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election.
You speak to them around the water fountain and they can't explain why, they've seen no evidence, but it must be true. They are naive to believe the media is pure in it's intentions. They are ignorant to the fact that the media could be complicit in pushing a narrative.
For more, go read Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by by Ryan Holiday marketed as 'the cult classic that predicted the rise of fake news—revised and updated for the post-Trump, post-Gawker age.' You'll quickly understand that the media is no longer the unofficial fourth branch of government which attempts to check government power with truth. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions Taxation is Theft Bot
You want real hardcore triggering? Hillary can do it.
The audio book makes it all the more real since you get to hear her voice delivering the spikes of justification into your mind. If reading this book, or listening to it, is difficult, then you have every reason to feel good about yourself. Unfortunately, "What Happened" is not a book about Clinton's loss to Trump. "What Happened" is a book about why YOU, true believer in the Democratic Party, should take hope and not abandon the cause. If you aren't already a registered Democrat, "What Happened" was not written for you. Those who are immediately engaged by this work will be those who have very similar thinking to Clinton. She wastes no time in identifying her audience. The appeals to emotion start in the Introduction. I'm only about halfway in, but there is very little in terms of a 'positive message' so far. What should people that loved Hillary do in their defeat? The message is, "Work harder. Chin up and believe in the cause. The other side is evil, so you will win by being righteous. Believe in your side." Left unanswered is the fact that no real solutions are yet offered. Nothing about what being righteous actually is. Nothing about what values should be promoted. Nothing but "here is evil, we failed to counter it, we will try harder! YOU need to try harder!" Every position Hillary backed is assumed to be good. Every opposition to her is assumed to be vile. (PLOT TWIST: The Republicans use this same partisan trick. It's only the 'other side' that is evil) Still, it is worth the listen. You can really hear Hillary's self portrait come across in a way that justifies everything she did and everything she would have done if she was elected. When you realize that she is just another politician, painted in true Bastiat style, you can see her true view of this world: She knows better than we do. We are clay. She will mold us. Then we will all rise through her leadership. "What Happened" is a book written for those who already believe in Hillary's vision of the world. This book was written to hold together the Democratic Party power base after a crushing blow. I highly recommend reading it to understand the mind of those who seek power. Just make sure you have your own world view screwed on tight while you read it. Those who lean toward empathy, those who believe we can make a world completely free of suffering will be easily persuaded by "What Happened." What Happened is a huge appeal to emotion, and what is commonly believed to be 'right' at the time. And it is right to be so! There is no logical argument to be won on this side. Only those who have been fooled into believing that quick government fixes can lead to prosperity for all, will by in. There are plenty who will readily do so. You, however, know so much more. You know morality isn't just for those who are living today. Morality must be for us, and for those who will come after us. They will tell you that morality is for just those who are alive now. They will tell you that you must advocate only for the living. They will tell you that those who suffer now weigh more than those who will suffer ten fold in the future. Her message and her philosophy deeply contrast with my message of Limited Government. Unfortunately, the popularity of Bernie Sanders has brought socialism and 'big government' solutions back into vogue. Our children will pay for the success of that philosophy. Their quality of life will be less due to our greediness. One life goal of mine is that I will be able to face my children in the future and tell them that I did everything in my power to reject these increases in debt even if it meant I didn't get a tax cut. I may write more about this book once I complete it. Maybe not. At this point, I'm really just glad that I didn't spend money on it. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions Taxation is Theft Bot MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Unpopular Opinion: I hate people who have the 'poor' mindset.
I not only oppose government welfare, I oppose private welfare. You'd be better off burning your money than giving it to a person who lacks the drive to provide themselves opportunities. At least burning it would provide you some heat. For the last 9 years, I've been living with poor people. Why? I rent out the spare room in my home, because I'm extroverted and like having some extra spending cash. Every single one of them has been lazy and stupid. I recall one had tickets to Lollapalooza. She paid $50 each for them. They were selling for $300 each on StubHub. Her boss wouldn't give her the day off. What'd she do? Well, not the smart thing, which is go to work and sell the tickets. Nope, she calls in sick! Yeah, I'm sure that won't be remembered come raise or layoff time. Another had to borrow money from me every year for his girlfriend's birthday. Same girlfriend. Three years in a row. Sure, he always paid it back promptly, but seriously.... It happens on the same day every year! My current tenant is two months behind on rent. I offered to knock off $150 if he raked the leaves and cleaned the gutters (a $60 value). Guess what hasn't happened a month later? Guess who won't be making any more generous offers of work in lieu of rent? (Seriously, if you're looking to hire anyone in the Lake Worth area, check with me first to make sure you don't hire the guy.) He's a tow truck driver, who gets paid on commission (using his bosses equipment). He was complaining about not getting paid to be on call. I suggested he should go to his boss and ask how he could be of greater use to his boss. Explain to his boss he wants to make more money, but he understands he needs to provide value to his boss, so he is respectfully asking his boss for help in becoming a more useful employee. He looked at me like I had grown two heads. Then he went into a screed about how it isn't fair he doesn't get paid by the hour (even though his boss only gets paid a flat rate per tow). No matter how much you help these people, they will always be poor. They squander every opportunity you give them, ignore any advice you give them, and only ever think of their own short term pleasure. We should do away with all forms of charity, with the possible exception of work internships. Work opportunities will separate the wheat from the chafe. Let the rest die face down in the gutter. At least then we'd get soap and glue when we rendered down their bodies. (There's a touch of sarcasm in this paragraph... you know, for effect) Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go stand on my porch and yell at children to get off my lawn. "Get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in libertarian thought and free-market economics online for just 24 cents a day." Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
What is the purpose of Government?
Imagine a time before kings, presidents, or prime ministers, before the formation of society and civilization. This is what philosophers call a "state of nature". In this thought experiment, people lived freely, without rules or formal laws. But what exactly does this state look like? For 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes the state of nature is a war of all against all. Mankind’s basic nature is fear, insecurity, death, and turmoil. And from this constant terror, People decided to surrender some basic rights to a sovereign entity, or what he called The Leviathan. If one was, say, fed up with the theft of his potions, the state could pass laws to protect his goods or help him receive some sort of reparation. This protection is important for a number of reasons, but the most significant is that laws, and their enforcement, keep constant anxiety at bay. For 18th century Swiss-born french philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the state of nature is rather different than that conceived by Hobbes. Rousseau sees natural man as independent, solitary, and peaceful. Rousseau thought people were much better off without government. With the creation of agriculture, private property, and the division of labor, however, came inequalities. Unequal access to resources created tension, enmity, and envy. People started to become aware of their limited material situation and lack of upward mobility. They became aware of their 'unfreedom'. This led Rousseau to claim that “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains.” While both philosophers describe the state of nature as a sort of beastly existence absent any morality, they disagree on some fundamentals. Rousseau sees the Hobbesian model as leading to despotism, in which people have no choice but to turn to a third party to secure basic needs. Consequently, they do not freely choose their leaders. Rousseau argues that rather than choosing leaders out of fear, people choose to give up some power and rights, at least so that citizens can be equal. Rousseau dictated that decisions ought to be made for the sake of everyone, instead of a few. This would require that people follow a rule of law that they would follow on their own anyway. For Rousseau, people are better without government because society means unfreedom and oppression. Whether out of fear or for the sake of equality, the consent to be ruled is called the social contract. So listeners I ask, “Who has it right?” Do people need to be kept in line or should they remain free to do as they wish? Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
We are a monthly book club for anyone who wants to learn more about Libertarianism. We will discuss each book's chapter/section in separate posts, so everyone will be able to read along at their own pace. We typically also focus on books which are available for free so that everyone can participate.
Join the Private Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism. Liberalism is Mises's classic statement in defense of a free society, one of the last statements of the old liberal school and a text from which we can continue to learn. It has been the conscience of a global movement for liberty for 80 years. This new edition, a gorgeous hardback from the Mises Institute, features a new foreword by Tom Woods. It can also be downloaded here. Ch1, pgs. 18 -26 From Tom Wood's Forward: “The liberal sets a very high threshold for the initiation of violence. Beyond the minimal taxation necessary to maintain legal and defense services—and some liberals shrink even from this— he denies to the state the power to initiate violence and seeks only peaceful remedies to perceived social ills. He opposes violence for the sake of redistributing wealth, of enriching influential pressure groups, or trying to improve man’s moral condition. Civilized people, says the liberal, interact with each other not according to the law of the jungle, but by means of reason and discussion.” Intro. Mises: “If it is maintained that the consequence of a liberal policy is or must be to favor the special interests of certain strata of society, this is still a question that allows of discussion. It is one of the tasks of the present work to show that such a reproach is in no way justified . . . In the customary rhetoric of the demagogues these facts are represented quite differently. To listen to them, one would think that all progress in the techniques of production redounds to the exclusive benefit of a favored few, while the masses sink ever more deeply into misery. However, it requires only a moment’s reflection to realize that the fruits of all technological and industrial innovations make for an improvement in the satisfaction of the wants of the great masses.” While Mises endeavors to explain liberalism rationally, he says that you can't explain anti-liberalism that way because they are not rational. He calls it Fourierism - a kind of neurosis that is basically envy. Ch 1 The section on property reminded me a lot of what Rothbard wrote in New Liberty. Not surprising since I am sure Rothbard cited Mises a lot. On Freedom: “Muddleheaded babblers may therefore argue interminably over whether all men are destined for freedom and are as yet ready for it. They may go on contending that there are races and peoples for whom Nature has prescribed a life of servitude and that the master races have the duty of keeping the rest of mankind in bondage. The liberal will not oppose their arguments in any way because his reasoning in favor of freedom for all, without distinction, is of an entirely different kind. We liberals do not assert that God or Nature meant all men to be free, because we are not instructed in the designs of God and of Nature, and we avoid, on principle, drawing God and Nature into a dispute over mundane questions. What we maintain is only that a system based on freedom for all workers warrants the greatest productivity of human labor and is therefore in the interest of all the inhabitants of the earth.” The section on Peace reminded me of . . . I really liked section 2, talking about how by nature individuals will seek out beneficial relationships through mutual exchange. It's not that we believe that business is benevolent, but that like Adam Smith had said: it is not from their own generosity that the butcher and baker offer their service but of their own livelihood. Former President Obama has repeatedly tried to infer cryptography is a threat to the /people/ if government doesn't have a skeleton key to everyone's digital house and digital papers by saying "Everyone is walking around with a swiss bank account in their pocket." The first time I heard him say it out loud some years ago now, I thought to myself "that sounds expletive ideal!" . The answer to the underlying and ongoing incessant plea by government to give them permission to do what they are already doing without permission, spying on the /people/, is of the form PRIVACY SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. Given that the governments have proven themselves without honor and have violated any trust or hope thereof to defend from plunder in the act of plundering themselves, privacy going forward will be kept by intellectual strength. This is not a request, this is an action a person takes, or doesn't take: responsibility for their own digital information security. If you didn't read the chapter you probably won't get how that all relates together in terms of the shenanigans they've been up to since his observations were originally written. Trusting the other end to hold all the keys and the data has proven unwise, hasn't it? Ch 1, pgs. 27-41 I have some qualms about how Mises frames the discussion on equality. He finds fault with nineteenth century liberals (here I think we can substitute Thomas Jefferson though Mises noticeably does not call him out by name) because they argued for the equality of all men on the basis of natural rights theory. Mises argues that is preposterous because all you have to do is look at people to see they are not equal. But when Jefferson said all men are created equal he certainly did not mean that all men are identical. Since he rejects equality as a reason for giving equal treatment under the law, he therefore resorts to making utilitarian arguments. He basically says that elites best not deprive the poor and working class of equal treatment because they are outnumbered and will meet resistance - usually bloody. However, you will recall that in New Liberty, Rothbard will argue that it is a mistake to make utilitarian arguments and that we must always argue from first principles. In section five Mises argues that the luxuries of today inevitably become the necessities of tomorrow. I am glad to know that in the future we will all fly first class, have yachts, chauffeur driven limousines, and luxury boxes at the ballpark. Section Six: “In requiring of the individual that he should take society into consideration in all his actions, that he should forgo an action that, while advantageous to him, would be detrimental to social life, society does not demand that he sacrifice himself to the interests of others. For the sacrifice that it imposes is only a provisional one: the renunciation of an immediate and relatively minor advantage in “exchange for a much greater ultimate benefit. The continued existence of society as the association of persons working in cooperation and sharing a common way of life is in the interest of every individual.” In Section Seven, everyone should see the problem with this: “There is, to be sure, a sect that believes that one could quite safely dispense with every form of compulsion and base society entirely on the voluntary observance of the moral code. The anarchists consider state, law, and government as superfluous institutions in a social order that would really serve the good of all, and not just the special interests of a privileged few. Only because the present social order is based on private ownership of the means of production is it necessary to resort to compulsion and coercion in its defense. If private property were abolished, then everyone, without exception, would spontaneously observe the rules demanded by social cooperation.” Mises here to me seems to be arguing that anarchism is incompatible with private property. Of course, most of us now understand this to be incorrect and the present-day Mises Institute could be called the Anarcho-Capitalist Institute. Mises writes: “Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism.” He may be right about that, which is why Rothbard used the term libertarianism to describe anarcho-capitalism and deliberately distinguished it from liberalism which he viewed as a sort of proto-libertarianism. Mises goes on this same line to a sickening degree in Section Eight. When reading this I thought of this meme, but in place of "proud conservative" I guess you could photoshop Mises' face.
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Ch 1, pgs. 42-59
Mises confuses me again in Section Nine: “The champions of democracy in the eighteenth century argued that only monarchs and their ministers are morally depraved, injudicious, and evil. The people, however, are altogether good, pure, and noble, and have, besides, the intellectual gifts needed in order always to know and to do what is right. This is, of course, all nonsense, no less so than the flattery of the courtiers who ascribed all good and noble qualities to their princes.” That I agree with completely. However, he closes that same section: “Only a group that can count on the consent of the governed can establish a lasting regime." So he begins by criticizing democracy and closes by praising it. In between he seems to be making another utilitarian argument in favor of democracy. Section 10 I like. Basically he argues that fascism at the time of his writing was popular because it was a response to the evils of Bolshevism. “Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the arch-enemies of civilization” He was very prescient here: “But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses.” Section 11: Found this depressing considering it was written several decades ago: “Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics." Mises argues that once you concede government the power to prohibit certain substances you have lost the argument that they should not be able to prohibit certain reading material. Section 12: He makes another utilitarian argument. The state should be tolerant of religious beliefs, not because every individual has freedom of conscience, but says Mises, because intolerance will lead to social unrest by persecuted religious. We of course today would prefer no state around to be tolerant or intolerant of anything. Section 13 Mises wrongly suggests that suppression of conduct detrimental to the social order requires a state. As we saw from Rothbard though that is not the case at all. Ch 2, pgs. 60-84 In The Organization of the Economy, Mises points out the difference between redistributing capital among the working class and the communal ownership of property, but of course rejects both. In "The Impracticality of Socialism" he says that while the common criticism that “most men will not exhibit the same zeal in the performance of the duties and tasks assigned to them that they bring to their daily work in a social order based on private property" is correct, it does not get at the heart of the matter: “What renders socialism impracticable is precisely the fact that calculation of this kind is impossible in a socialist society.” In Sections 2 and 3 Mises says that since the world is not a paradise, people like to direct their unhappiness at the institution of private property and that governments by their very nature always attack private property. Below is a perfect example of that from a recent interview with New York City Mayor DeBlasio. Mises says that while many people today understand that private property can not be dispensed with completely, they think government intervention is necessary to even the playing field. He explains though how every single government intervention in the voluntary exchange of goods and services can only make the market less efficient i.e. Back to Hazlitt's consequences seen and unseen. "Get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in libertarian thought and free-market economics online for just 24 cents a day."
Ch 2, pgs. 85-94
In section seven Mises argues that we have nothing to fear from natural monopolies. Reminded me of this Tom Woods episode I would summarize section six as that capitalism is not perfect, just better than any other economic system conceivable. Reminded me of this:
Ch 3, pgs. 105-117
Section 3.1 is brief, but I think complex. Mises argued that for classical liberals, there is no divide between domestic and foreign policy: The same principles that apply to one apply to the other. And I would summarize that principle as non-interventionism: no intervention by government in the domestic economy and no intervention by government in the affairs of foreign governments - i.e. Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. So far, so good, but Mises goes on to extol the virtues of cosmopolitanism vis-a-vis nationalism. Also fine. But he then argued a that national unity is itself a product of liberalism. THAT seems to conflict a bit with the point he just made, and quite a bit with the book we read by Tom DiLorenzo where he made the case that DISUNITY within a nation is a force for good when it comes to libertarianism and advocated secession and nullification as tools to advance liberty. Ch 3, pgs. 118-141 Section 3.4 Mises argues that ethic conflicts within heterogeneous nations can only be avoided when said nation completely adopts a liberal program. As per Rothbard though: Ch. 4, pgs. 155-169 We often hear complaints that libertarianism does not advance due to some failure or another in tactics or strategy on the part of libertarians. In Section 4.1 Mises dismisses that concern saying that liars and tricksters need tactics and strategy but that if people can't see the truth for themselves there is no hope for them. Mises goes even further: “Most people do not have even the intellectual endowments required to think through the—after all very complicated—problems of social cooperation, and they certainly do not have the will power necessary to make those provisional sacrifices that all social action demands.” Well that is certainly downer, leaving all political activity completely useless. (He makes that explicit in the next section). I am left wondering what is the point of his even writing and publishing books if he believes that? Ch. 4, pgs. 170-187 Section 4.3 "There are, therefore, only two parties: the party in power and the one that wants to be in power . . . As their demands are, in principle, limitless, it is impossible for any one of these parties ever to achieve all the ends it envisages . . . Every party seeks, nevertheless, to attain to such influence as will permit it to satisfy its desires as far as possible, while also taking care always to be able to justify to its electors why all their wishes could not be fulfilled." Certainly seems apropos today regarding the GOP's failure to repeal ACA, defund Planned Parenthood etc. Section 4.4. "Society cannot, in the long run, exist if it is divided into sharply defined groups, each intent on wresting special privileges for its own members” To me that is almost like saying "Society can not in the long run exist. Period." Mises I think unwittingly makes the case for radical individualism. Or It's saying politics will cause society to cease, if we keep it up. Section 4.5 he returns to the idea that liberals must fight force with ideas not counter-force. Section 4.6. He returns to the idea that critics of liberalism will claim that liberalism is the special interest of capitalists, but that that is false because capitalism ultimately benefits not just one class of people, but everyone. In a liberal system property rights belong to all, not just to capitalists. Ch 5 In Chapter Five, Mises argues that the enemies of capitalism have lost the debate that alternatives to capitalism can lead to greater material wealth, so they have moved the goalpost and now claim that material wealth is a societal ill. Mises replies though that a return to primitive asceticism would result in the deaths of billions of people. "Liberalism is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence . . . It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all." Summary As I mentioned a few times in earlier chapters, my beef with Mises is that he is a minarchist. That is a step backward after having read Rothbard. Rothbard and Hoppe take the foundation established by Mises to its next logical progression. I know it is not really possible, but it would be great if we could read books in historical order of their logical progression toward anarchy-capitalism. If you want to read the precursors of Mises, the first appendix of this book is a good place to start. Join the Private Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
LIBERTARIAN BOOK CLUB: Organized Crime - The Unvarnished Truth About Government by Thomas DiLorenzo10/13/2017 We are a monthly book club for anyone who wants to learn more about Libertarianism. We will discuss each book's chapter/section in separate posts, so everyone will be able to read along at their own pace. We typically also focus on books which are available for free so that everyone can participate. Join the Private Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism. Other books we've reviewed can be found here.
Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government by Thomas DiLorenzo
Located here for free. Politics and thieves, coercion and regulation, fascism and the Fed, centralization and liberty, workers and unions, trade and freedom, free-market achievements and government disasters in American history — this book covers it all! Section 1: Coercion and Regulation I thought his synopsis and examples from Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Control: How NOT to Fight Inflation was solid. I’ll be adding it to my reading list. Unfortunately, no AudioBook version! The “DiLorenzo’s Laws of Government” are pretty solid. I’ll need to expound on them later in a longer article and have them somewhere where I can share them easier when I’m arguing with people who want bigger government. They resounded with me as I think they will with others. • DiLorenzo’s First Law of Government- In government, failure is success. Welfare Bureaucracy, Government Schools, NASA tragedies and the Federal Reserve, etc. • DiLorenzo’s Second Law of Government- Politicians will rarely, if ever, assume responsibility for any of the problems that they cause with bad policies. • DiLorenzo’s Third Law of Government- With few exceptions, politicians are habitual liars. • DiLorenzo’s Fourth Law of Government- Politicians will only take the advice of their legions of academic advisers if the advice promises to increase the state’s power, wealth, and influence even if the politicians know that the advice is bad for the rest of society. I also agreed that the price control section was timely after the debate we just endured following Hurricane Irma. I've written EXTENSIVELY about it here on my Steemit blog. How is it that The Continental Congress wisely adopted an anti-price control resolution on June 4, 1778 but it's still up for debate the negative effects? That Resolution read: “Whereas it hath been found by experience that limitations upon the prices of commodities are not only ineffectual for the purpose proposed, but likewise productive of very evil consequences—resolved, that it be recommended to the several states to repeal or suspend all laws limiting, regulating or restraining the price of any Article.” If they knew price controls always failed 240 years ago, why is it even a question today? I blame education, or lack thereof. Chapter 3 Who Will Regulate the Regulators The logic on ‘providing more power to the Fed in order to prevent another Great Recession” was spot on: “One of the biggest governmental lies is that financial markets are unregulated and in dire need of more central planning by government. Laissez-faire is said to have caused the “Great Recession.” Fed bureaucrats have lobbied for some kind of Super Regulatory Authority to supposedly remedy this problem. Th is is all a lie because according to one of the Fed’s own publications (“The Federal Reserve System: Purposes and Functions”), the Fed already has “supervisory and regulatory authority” over the following partial list of activities: bank holding companies, state-chartered banks, foreign branches of member banks, edge and agreement corporations, U.S. state-licensed bank branches, agencies and representative offices of foreign banks, nonbanking activities of foreign banks, national banks, savings banks, nonbank subsidiaries of bank holding companies, thrift holding companies, financial reporting procedures of banks, accounting policies of banks, business “continuity” in case of economic emergencies, consumer protection laws, securities dealings of banks, information technology used by banks, foreign investment by banks, foreign lending by banks, branch banking, bank mergers and acquisitions, who may own a bank, capital “adequacy standards,” extensions of credit for the purchase of securities, equal opportunity lending, mortgage disclosure information, reserve requirements, electronic funds transfers, interbank liabilities, Community Reinvestment Act sub-prime lending “demands,” all international banking operations, consumer leasing, privacy of consumer financial information, payments on demand deposits, “fair credit” reporting, transactions between member banks and their affiliates, truth in lending, and truth in savings.” I had never heard of the non-profit libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute nor its annual product Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State. It outlines the annual effect of regulations on business in the United States. Just checking out the fact sheet was valuable. As someone who thinks government spending and the national debt are keystone issues of our time, I also want to check out Underground Government: The Off-Budget Public Sector, his book written with James Bennett in 1983. Maybe we can get that book into the hopper for the Book Club! Chapter 5: Our Totalitarian Regulatory Bureaucracy “In chapter 5 of F.A. Hayek’s 1944 classic, Th e Road to Serfdom, the Nobel laureate warned that the state need not directly control all or even most of the means of production to exert totalitarian control over the economic life of a nation. He cited the example of Germany where, as of 1928, “the central and local authorities directly control 53 percent” of the German economy. In addition to this, wrote Hayek, private industry in Germany was so heavily regulated that the state indirectly controlled “almost the whole economic life of the nation.” It was through such totalitarian controls that Germany traveled down “the road to serfdom.” As Hayek further stated, “there is, then scarcely an individual end which is not dependent for its achievement on the action of the state, and the ‘social scale of values’ which guides the state’s action must embrace practically all individual ends.” In other words, government regulation was so pervasive that the pursuit of profit, driven by consumer preferences, was mostly replaced by the whims of regulatory bureaucrats.” Well Said: “First, construct a totally unrealistic theory of “perfect” competition that assumes away all real-world competition with assumptions of perfect information, homogenous products and prices, free or costless entry and exit from industry, and “many” firms. Second, compare real-world markets to this utopian Nirvana state and condemn the markets as “imperfect” or “failed. The third characteristic of market failure theories is to recommend intervention by presumably perfect government that is assumed to suffer from no failures and which will correct the failures of the market.” When I read that, it reminded me of this. Section 2 I read DiLorenzo's Real Lincoln which I highly recommend. I like how in chapter nine he describes Rod Blogajevich as an amateur crook compared to Honest Abe. It is not just a matter of businesses contributing to campaigns to get political favors but politicians using threat of regulations to extort contributions. Chapter 11 Good point on the housing bubble: “So when the Fed’s expansionary monetary policy caused the real estate bubble, the extraordinary increases in property values were accompanied by equally extraordinary property tax increases. (After the bubble had burst, local governments were eager to raise property tax rates so as not to lose property tax revenue." Chapter 12 “A principle of public choice economics is that politicians will always do all they can to disguise subsidies to less-than-meritorious groups, such as millionaire corporate farmers. If they can subsidize them through protectionism, or price supports, this is much preferred than simply writing the millionaire businessman a check.” Chapter 13 He discusses Hamilton and I recommend the Tom Woods vs Michael Malice debate (in which I side with Tom. Chapter 15 He expands a bit on the idea he expressed earlier of why exactly mainstream media is so pro-government. Section 3 I agree with DiLorenzo that secession, nullification, decentralization and localism is more effective at achieving liberty than nationalism or universalism, but it is important to understand, “Of course “states” don’t have rights; only individuals do." Since he understands that I think it is confusing that he keeps using the phrase. I definitely agree with him that repeal of the seventeenth amendment would greatly improve our situation. But that that seems highly unlikely to ever happen. Chapter 17 The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. I read this short book a few years ago and highly recommend it. Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virgina Resolutions and their Legacy
Chapter 21
“The Lacrosse, Wisconsin Democrat newspaper advocate assassination when it editorialized in November of 1864 that “If Abraham Lincoln should be reelected for another term of four years of such wretched administration, we hope that a bold hand will be found to plunge the dagger into the tyrant’s heart for the public welfare.” (Does that violate the NAP?) Chapter 22 DiLorenzo basically says that Abraham Lincoln and Adolph Hitler were brothers from another mother. Chapter 23 He points out that governments are by far the worst killers in history and that in that regard Abraham Lincoln was worse than Pol Pot. Chapter 25 DiLorenzo eviscerates Paul Krugman, which is always fun. “Krugman is right about democracy in a sense: Democracy is essentially one big organized act of bullying whereby a larger group bullies a smaller group in order to plunder it with taxes. The “Civil War” proved that whenever a smaller group has finally had enough, and attempts to leave the game, the larger group will resort to anything—even the mass murder of hundreds of thousands and the bombing and burning of entire cities—to get its way.”
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Chapter 26 and 27 In these chapters he does still more debunking of the Lincoln mythology. I did notice though that he doesn't claim that the War of Northern Aggression was an unmitigated evil - just mostly evil with terrible consequences, but he does acknowledge that the abolition of slavery was the one positive outcome of the war. He also discusses how American government is both fascist and socialist. Chapter 30 – 33 These chapters are all about the evils of central banking. I agree completely and have nothing to add except that coincidentally yesterday, before reading chapter 30, I used a very similar article by DiLorenzo to counter a commenter on this post who was saying that all economists think the Fed is great and that basically Ron is a crank. That post and Brion's book should be of interest to anyone who liked that chapter. Ch 32 reminded me of this meme.
Chapter 34
This chapter debunks the notion that the Federal Reserve is in any way libertarian just because Alan Greenspan was head of it once. Chapter 35 Debunks the myth that the Fed is in any way independent - Fed chairmen basically do the bidding of the president in order to maintain their jobs. President wants loose policy? President gets loose policy, and vice versa. I liked his discussion on the damage done by typical college economics textbooks, particularly Paul Samuelson's, which is most popular. Chapter 36 Explains how government caused the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. This is useful because people often try to blame DE-regulation when nothing could be further from the truth. As an aside, I found The Big Short an entertaining movie on the subject if you have not seen it, but it largely leaves unmentioned government as a cause and this chapter definitely fills in the blanks. Section 5 Chapter 47 Macroeconomists Discover Economics and Debunk the New Deal (Again) is probably the most intriguing to me. Seven decades of economists who have sold us the line that the New Deal and large-scale government spending is what got us out of the Great Depression. It took several decades but macroeconomic model builders, who consider themselves to be the elite of the economics profession, have finally discovered freshman-level principles of economics and have used that discovery to finally debunk FDR’s New Deal. (Beginning in the 1930s Austrian School economists like Henry Hazlitt recognized the truth about the New Deal: It made the Great Depression deeper and longer lasting.) The only wise thing to have done was to have allowed the liquidation of hundreds of overcapitalized businesses to occur, cut taxes and spending, and deregulate. Instead, the Fed increased the money supply by 100 percent in a failed attempt to create another bubble while the president and Congress implemented an explosion of government interventionism. That was the first time in American history that a depression was responded to with government interventionism rather than governmental retrenchment, and the result was a seventeen-year long Great Depression, the worst in history. The essay is solid and I'll need to look into Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression to learn more. That mainstream macroeconomists and their modeling have come around against governmental interventionism during a depression is great. Now, if the citizenry can learn that before the next bubble pops. I foresee politicians and special interests will use the next crisis as an opportunity to line their pockets. CHAPTER 48 Will Socialism Make You Happier? The Trojan Horse of “Happiness Research”I hadn't heard of this statist argument before but basically "...statists around the world are changing their tune and saying that prosperity doesn’t really matter after all; what matters is how happy we are. And, they say, that is what government can be really, really good at—making us happy. Consequently, they argue, there should be no more limits on governmental powers, for limiting governmental powers will limit our very happiness." In the year this book was published, Bhutan was the 'Happiest' according to the UN-sponsored "World Happiness Report". Yes, Bhutan. This hellhole, ahem, I mean paradise: As an intelligence officer which has experience in this part of the world... No. This year's winner is Norway, which is much more beautiful and bearable.Source:WORLD HAPPINESS REPORT 2017 It's also a lot more socialist, which to be fair, is the point. It's edited by leftist academic Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, what else would you expect? As F.A. Hayek commented in The Road to Serfdom, the end of socialism was always egalitarianism; only the means changed over time, beginning with government ownership of the means of production and transforming to income redistribution through a welfare state and a “progressive” income tax. These happiness researchers never make any mention at all of the well documented pathologies created by welfare statism, such as the destruction of the work ethic, family breakup, the growth of dysfunctionality caused by a welfare state that removes people from the working population, etc. Thus, “happiness research” is part of a crusade to persuade the public that poverty and servitude to the state are superior to prosperity and freedom. It is a new version of what twentieth-century communists referred to as “socialism with a smiling face” during the last, dying days of totalitarian communism. Chapter 49 The Canard of “Asymmetric Information” as a Source of Market FailureGood information on the Nirvana Theory of Markets. I tried to look more into it, but it is unique to only this writing. Nirvana Fallacy— comparing real-world markets to an unattainable utopian ideal (perfect competition), and then denouncing markets because they fall short of utopia or Nirvana. Having “proven” that markets “fail,” the analyst then proposes government intervention under the assumption that no such failures will infect government. Markets may not be perfect, but government is assumed to be. Overall, I liked Section 5 the best. The ease at which he demystifies economic myths is extremely understandable. I just wish it was taken onboard by many voters who refuse to heed the empirical evidence against government intervention. Asymmetric information problem really applies to government not the free market: “In this case we are dealing with the well-established fact that, in their capacity as voters, people tend to be “rationally ignorant” of almost all of what government does. In fact, government is so pervasive that no human mind could possibly comprehend the tiniest fraction of one percent of what government in a country the size of the U.S. does. Consequently, special-interest groups dominate all democratic governments;” A related problem I think is that "public servants" are allowed to keep secrets from their supposed masters. Chapter 51 “Politicians perpetuate the myth of government job creation because the government jobs that are created are seen by the average voter, whereas the private-sector jobs that are destroyed (or never created) are not.” I.e. Hazlitt's seen and unseen as described in Economics in One Lesson Chapter 52 DiLorenzo shoots down the gender wage gap myth. Tom Woods has done a couple of shows on this subject as well, as I recall. Summary DiLorenzo lays out a decent criticism of how Government, corrupted by size and motive, has engaged in forceful and deceitful acts against the populace. To be honest, I really dislike collections of articles such as this and found in other "books". If an author is still alive, such collections are always better to be formed in to a true book that is able to cleanly explain a subject from start to finish. While DiLorenzo's articles are well written (and are quite often sourced with citations! Such a rarity among articles), the execution of the message would have been much better had he taken the time to write these out in to full chapters of their own. The topics covered in the book were good ones to discuss (though I think that the mentions of the Civil war would be better served in a separate book), but I do wish that the author had expanded more on the topics of taxation, subsidies, and the enforcement of victimless crimes. Overall a good read, and some articles were absolutely fantastic. If only the author could have written this out as an actual book and added another hundred pages or so, this could have been something especially fantastic. edit: I've decided to give the book 5 stars, from the original 4. I find that I often go back to the book to re-read certain articles when I come across various topics of discussion. I still wish that the author had written a proper book instead of just compiling a collection of his articles, though. 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We are a monthly book club for anyone who wants to learn more about Libertarianism. We will discuss each book's chapter/section in separate posts, so everyone will be able to read along at their own pace. We typically also focus on books which are available for free so that everyone can participate. Join the Private Facebook Group and follow us on Twitter as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism.
Other books we've reviewed can be found here. The great historian of classical liberalism strips away the veneer of exalted leaders and beloved wars. Professor Ralph Raico shows them to be wolves in sheep's clothing and their wars as attacks on human liberty and human rights. In the backdrop of this blistering and deeply insightful and scholarly history is the whitewashing of "great leaders" like Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, FDR, Truman, Stalin, Trotsky, and other collectivists. They are highly regarded because they were on the "right side" of the rise of the state. But do they deserve adulation? Raico says no: these great leaders were main agents in the decline of civilization in the 20th century, all of them anti-liberals who used their power to celebrate and enhance state power. The book can be found here Free! It is striking how history seems to repeat itself continually. Reading through this book, it is very easy to see parallels drawn between the effects of foreign policy (and interventionist leaders) then and what we deal with now as an effect of the War on Terror (and certainly what is coming from that). I was interested from the intro pp 29-30, the man Raico names as the founder of anarcho- capitalism: “Unsurprisingly, the most thoroughgoing of the liberal revisionists was the arch-radical Gustave de Molinari, originator of what has come to be known as anarcho-capitalism. In his work on the Great Revolution of 1789, Molinari eviscerated the founding myth of the French Republic. France had been “proceeding gradually and organically towards liberal reform in the later eighteenth century; the revolution put an end to that process, substituting an unprecedented expansion of state power and a generation of war. The self-proclaimed liberal parties of the nineteenth century were, in fact, machines for the exploitation of society by the now victorious predatory middle classes, who profited from tariffs, government contracts, state subsidies for railroads and other industries, state-sponsored banking, and the legion of jobs available in the ever-expanding bureaucracy.” Chapter 1This chapter Illustrates a lot of hypocrisy. British government saw German violation of Belgium sovereignty as an aggression that could not stand, overlooking their own long history of violating others' sovereignty. In fact, Raico argues that it was the British example that gave Germany the idea in the first place. This reminded me of American concern toward Russian alleged tampering in US elections, but no commiserate concern with the CIA' long history of tampering with the outcome of other countries' elections including Russia's. Chapter 2“In a way, Churchill as Man of the Century will be appropriate. This has been the century of the State —of the rise and hypertrophic growth of the welfare-warfare state — and Churchill was from first to last a Man of the State, of the welfare state and of the warfare state.” I remember at the start of Trump's presidency conservatives applauding Trump bring back to the Oval Office a bust of Churchill that Obama had apparently removed. Appropriate perhaps but definitely NOT a good omen. I will be recommending this chapter in the future with anyone who speaks well of Churchill. Here is another good resource.
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As a classic film buff I appreciated the mention of the book Screening History. I knew pro-British propaganda was prevalent in Hollywood films of the time. I did not fully realize they were completely orchestrated by an agent of the British government operating out of Rockefeller Center. Great quote by Raico: “A moral postulate of our time is that in pursuit of the destruction of Hitler, all things were permissible. “Yet why is it selfevident that morality required a “crusade against Hitler in 1939 and 1940, and not against Stalin? At that point, Hitler had slain his thousands, but Stalin had already slain his millions.” “Churchill’s policy of all-out support of Stalin foreclosed other, potentially more favorable approaches: “There is no doubt whatsoever that it would have been in the interest of Britain, the United States, and the world to have allowed—and indeed, to have encouraged—the world’s two great dictatorships to fight each other to a frazzle. Such a struggle, with its resultant weakening of both Communism and Nazism, could not but have aided in the establishment of a more stable peace."" Advice that I think translates well to the ME today. Raico argues that Churchill's interest was not in destroying Naziism but in making sure Germany itself would never again become a rival power and therefore he had no interest in helping dissidents within Germany. Churchill's objective was not to win the war, but to utterly destroy Germany. Raico also argues that German war crimes documented at Nuremberg pale in comparison to the war crimes committed by Churchill. Chapter 3Having just spent the last 72 hours debating people about Hiroshima, I am not going to say much about that part of that chapter other than to say I agree with Raico's assessment that Harry Falseman is the worst war criminal who ever lived. The chapter title reminds us that polls of historians consistently rank Falseman among the second tier of presidents as a "near great" but Raico convincingly argues on this chapter that he was one of, if not in fact, the worst. So many of the evils and problems we face today stem from 1947: “Meanwhile, the organs of the national security state were being put into place. The War and Navy Departments and the Army Air Corps were combined into what was named, in Orwellian fashion, the Defense Department. Other legislation established the National Security Council and upgraded intelligence operations into the Central Intelligence Agency . . . “Truman began the “special relationship” between the United States and Zionism. Franklin Roosevelt, while not blind to Zionist interests, favored an evenhanded approach in the Middle East as between Arabs and Jews. Truman, on the other hand, was an all-out champion of the Zionist cause . . . In the end, the part of Truman’s legacy with the greatest potential for harm is NATO.” Chapters 4 and 5I have not much to add other than agreement: Yes, communism and communists are bad. I would just mention that Darrow certainly seemed to disagree at the end of our last book when he talked about private property being divided up among the proletariat. Chapter Five makes a good point about how the left in Germany and elsewhere condemn Naziism to the exclusion of all other evils, including Soviet Communism and the Allies terror bombing of Germany. Relevant to today when you see politicians and MSM rightly condemning white supremacists in Charlottesville but relative silence regarding Antifa. Raico argues that while historians and the public tend to condemn without justification Germans as a whole for Nazi atrocities, they don't criticize the Russian or Chinese people for even worse Communist atrocities. Raico mentions German reunification. I recall in an old interview with Jeffrey Tucker, Hans Herman Hoppe talked about how it ended up being a large-scale wealth redistribution scheme due to the fact that the two countries being reunited were (1) a relatively prosperous capitalist country vs. (2) a dilapidated communist failed state. This resulted in the reunified country as a whole becoming overall more socialist, not only due to the redistribution that immediately took place to "rehabilitate" the East, but also due to the addition of East German citizens who had essentially been conditioned throughout the past half-century to support socialistic policies. Hoppe proposed instead that East and West Germany should have remained separate countries so that East Germany would have been forced to adopt laissez-faire policies in the absence of the West German subsidization of their economy. I think it would be a good idea for our group to read some Hoppe in the near future. Chapter 6Tsarist Russia was bad, but the Bolshevik Revolution unleashed bureaucratic collectivism far more reactionary and oppressive than what had gone before. "We have with Trotsky and his comrades in the Great October Revolution the spectacle of a few literary-philosophical intellectuals seizing power in a great country with the aim of overturning the whole economic system — but without the slightest idea how an economic system works.” Y'all need Mises! Communism = slavery: “Hadn’t Marx and Engels, in their ten-point program for revolutionary government in The Communist Manifesto, demanded as point eight, “Equal liability for all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture”? Neither Marx nor Engels ever disavowed their claim that those in charge of “the workers’ state” had the right to enslave the workers and peasants whenever the need might arise.” Chapter 7In this chapter, Raico reviews a book that sounds just awful. “For how does the rationale for NATO in its past or presently expanding forms meet Washington’s criterion of “extraordinary emergencies”? How can an alliance already lasting half a century count as “temporary”? How indeed. Do we presently have “as little political connection” with foreign countries as possible?” No, we do not. “ It was back “in 1819, when the American Board of Foreign Missions decided to evangelize the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands. The “donation of tens of millions of dollars to foreign missions “prefigured the governmental aid projects of the mid-twentieth century. "To argue in this fashion is to blot out, for whatever reason, the basic distinction between civil society, based on voluntarism, and the state, based on coercion.” “McDougall confutes the current shibboleth of the urgent need for the United States to spread “democracy” throughout the world. Other peoples may democratically choose anti-liberal regimes. In any case, what business is it of ours?”
Raico makes a great point about foreign aid I had not fully considered that applies just as well to other countries:
“Our half-century of experience with foreign aid has been almost a total loss." The method used, government-to-government aid, is intrinsically statist. The blunder continues today, as “we attempt to teach ex-Soviet peoples how to be good capitalists through the medium of government grants administered by government agencies for the benefit of our own and foreign bureaucracies” You can't spread capitalism by giving stuff away. Raico is almost as brutal toward Margaret Thatcher as he was Churchill: “Why, incidentally, is this lady, who pressed the first Bush to go to war in the Gulf and was the last-ditch friend of Gorbachev and last-ditch foe of German reunification . . ." Though Raico differs from Hoppe on reunification. Chapter 8This chapter consists of mini-reviews of a number of books on World War I. I was a bit confused by Raico's review of Niall Ferguson's "Pity of War." Most of Raico's book is critical of Anglo-centric bias in twentieth century military historiography, and this chapter ends the same for example when he argues that the real "Belgian atrocities" were what Belgians did in the Congo, NOT what Germans did in Belgium. But in the beginning of the chapter he takes exception to Ferguson's thesis that it would have been better had Great Britain stayed out of the war. I didn't really get Raico's point there. The book that sounds most interesting to me is “Richard Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation." Progressive Protestants rejected old line Calvinism and embraced utopian socialism and formed the National Council of Churches. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson became their idols. Julia Ward Howe, composer of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” frequently addressed their meetings: “A favorite line, of course, was “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” The progressive Protestants saw World War I as a continuation of the great crusade for righteousness that was the American Civil War . . On the day that national registration for the draft began, Wilson addressed a reunion of Confederate veterans. He told them that God had preserved the American Union in the Civil War so that the United States might be “an instrument in [His] hands... to see that liberty is made secure for mankind.” Regrettably, here, as before and ever after, the grandsons and great-grandsons of the valiant Confederate soldiers who resisted the North’s invasion of their country took the side of their former mortal enemies. In a kind of Stockholm syndrome, of identifying with the aggressor, they identified with the Union and disproportionately supported and fought and died in its wars. That strange anomaly continues to this day." I gather there that he has in mind that some of the most ardent supporters of the Military Industrial Complex are in states that were part of the former Confederacy. (See Lindsey Graham in South Carolina for example, the first state to secede). Chapter 9 A review of a book on World War I: "The British, naval blockade of Germany in the First World War belongs to the category of forgotten state atrocities of the twentieth century, of which there have been many." Of Winston Churchill, Herbert Hoover wrote, “The Prime Minister was a militarist of the extreme old school who held that the incidental starvation of women and children was justified if it contributed to the earlier ending of the war by victory.” I can't tell you how many war mongers tell me similar things today about US war in the Middle East. I never before heard the argument that the suffering from hunger in their early, formative years caused the enthusiasm of German youth for Nazism later on, but that was interesting. Chapter 10
This chapter is a review of John T Flynn's "The Roosevelt Myth."
Albert Jay Nock said that FDR's death was the greatest public improvement since the Bill of Rights. Flynn argued that Roosevelt established Mussolini style fascism in America and then manufactured a war with Japan to distract from the un sustainability of his economic system. When the Japanese sunk a US gunboat on the Yangtze River Flynn wondered what that gunboat was doing there. Turns out it was convoying Standard Oil tankers. FDR personally acted to destroy Flynn's career and used the IRS and the FBI to harass and intimidate him. More people were unemployed in 1938 than when Roosevelt was elected in '32. William F. Buckley had started out as an AnCap under the influence of Frank Chodorov but became a conservative statist because the thought the threat of the Soviet Union and communism necessitated taxation and a national security state. As a result, Buckley personally blackballed Flynn's career. One evil aspect of FDR that Raico/Flynn does not get into is the internment of Japanese-Americans. In another book club I am in, we are currently reading Rothbard's Betrayal of the American Right, which goes into quite a bit more detail on this if anyone is interested. Chapter 11In this chapter Raico reviews Justus Doenecke's book, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939–1941. It sounds like a good book. Not having read it I don't have much to add so I will just make two book recommendations. (Not for our club, just in general.): Doenecke (and thus Raico) cites Scot Berg's biography of Charles Lindbergh. I read it a few years ago, and it is mammoth but well worth checking out. I mentioned before Rothbard's Betrayal of the American Right, which covers much of the same ground but from firsthand experience. This Article fits nicely. Chapter 12 This chapter is a review of T. Hunt Tooley's "Western Front." Tooley has been a frequent guest on Tom Wood's show and if you like this chapter I recommend those episodes.
Tooley writes:
"Most of all Social Darwinism—really, just Darwinism — which taught the eternal conflict among the races and tribes of the human as of other species. The press and popular fiction, especially “boys’ fiction,” glorified the derring-do of war, while avoiding any graphic, off-putting descriptions of what combat actually inflicts on men, much as the U.S. media do” This reminded me of a poignant docudrama (below) that I saw several years ago and highly recommend. I have had discussions like this with some alt-right who insist tribalism and conflict are inherent to human nature but I am not sure it is not more learned behavior. Raico cites Christopher Hedges "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning." I read this book several years ago. As I recall it is pretty short and you can finish it off in a couple of hours. This really pisses me off: “Especially ecstatic were the intellectuals, who viewed the war as a triumph of “idealism” over the selfish individualism and crass materialism of the trading and shop keeping spirit (i.e., free market capitalism.) Tooley also utilizes "Robert Higgs’s conceptual framework in his seminal Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government.” I have not read that one, but it sounds like it might be a good one for us to read in the future. SummaryThroughout the book, Raico illustrates the (avoidable) problems that got us in to these "great" wars (that seem to have been forgotten by history and overlooked by modern historians with their love of these blood thirsty leaders and the policy they set forth). It is striking how history seems to repeat itself continually. Reading through this book, it is very easy to see parallels drawn between the effects of foreign policy (and interventionist leaders) then and what we deal with now as an effect of the War on Terror (and certainly what is coming from that). Raico is not one to make things up, and lists countless citations and footnotes at the end of every chapter (some of these going on for 30 pages). His attention to detail is much appreciated. The content is fantastic in addressing these topics thoroughly and illustrating how these wars were completely avoidable, these men are no heroes of history, and much of what we've been told or lead to believe about all of this is simply false. Throughout the book, Raico talks of "isolationism", much like others from the previously named "Old Right", in place of the more fitting (which he admits to at times in the book) term "non-intervention". I understand that throughout the early 20th century (and still today), the term "isolationism" or "isolationist" is used to criticize and mislabel one who supports non-interventionism. Still, it is puzzling to me why Raico and similar authors use this term despite knowing better today. Overall, the content in this book is fantastic, and the citations numerous (some chapters contain 30 pages of citations and footnotes on the citations, as Raico gives page numbers and even quotations). My only complaint is that this is a series of essays and book reviews, and not a true book in itself. I personally loathe this style of book writing (though it is a double-edged sword, as much like with Tom DiLorenzo's fantastic book Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government, it gets the information out there quickly and saves the author a good deal of time, but, in my opinion at least, it makes the book far less enjoyable). I scratch my head and wonder why it is that there are book reviews mixed in with expanded articles that Raico has written. The content is always great, but such formatting makes it harder on the reader to follow through with the author at times, I think. The content of the book is easily 5 stars, but I had to sadly knock a star off because of the way the book was formatted, by including book reviews in with expansive essays. This book is a very insightful and worthwhile read for anyone interested in history or US foreign policy, but it could have really been golden if Raico were to have sit down and write it cover to cover as a traditional book. Raico has given numerous lectures on the history of US foreign policy, and these can be found easily on YouTube if one is interested. Additionally, Raico at times discusses the "Old Right", and one may be inclined to believe that he is talking about Republicans or the collective pre-1950's Right-Wing (which is far from the case), so I would suggest reading Murray Rothbard's Betrayal of the American Right if you're not familiar with this small circle of Libertarians and Classical Liberals. If you're a fan of this book, I'd suggest listening to the Dangerous History Podcast, found here Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
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Clarence Seward Darrow (1857 – 1938) was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union. He wrote books on crime and punishment, as well as on the morality and origins of the system which are classics of the libertarian movement, and a cry for attention about all that is wrong in the legal system. Resist no Evil can be FOUND HERE and HERE.
Foreword by Douglas French I love the fact that Douglas French starts with a truth I've recognized for a long time. I think it foreshadows how the book won't necessarily conform to common allowable opinion. We’re drawn to books that reinforce what we already believe. It makes us feel smarter that an author shares our opinion and provides words we can use to make our case on the off chance that’s required. Specifically he discusses the party politics that are prevalent in the world today. At the time I remember being on the fence, with a slight lean toward supporting capital punishment. The deterrence arguments resonated with me. ... In the end, to not support capital punishment put a person with the bleeding heart liberals, company I didn’t want to be in. But this is the way with so many issues. Instead of analyzing the problem for ourselves, we let the group we identify with make the decision for us as to what we believe. A lazy way to live, requiring no thought, no study, no consideration, no introspection. Clarence Darrow does not allow for that. He does not allow you to sit in the jury box of public opinion and let the other jurors make up your mind. Although written in 1902, Darrow anticipates the prison nation that America is today. The state is set up not to administer justice, but to punish. No victims are compensated, but the state gets its pound of flesh. This reminded me of a Jason Stapleton Program show I was listening to recently. It discussed a Virginia man who was convicted of multiple counts of Grand Larceny (Theft greater than $200). The guy was stealing wheels off of cars and got sentenced to 132 years in prison. Jason Stapleton discussed why our system is apt to just throw people into prison and not have them work to repay the victims. Instead the victims got their tires stolen and THEN had to get taxed to support the criminal in prison for the rest of his life! Why not make the guy work with proceeds in reparations to the victims? Darrow's Introduction sums up well what we all know if wrong with our criminal justice system. CHAPTER I: THE NATURE OF THE STATE "The doctrine of non-resistance" that Darrow refers is generally defined as "the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised". So if it's the law, you follow it, regardless of morality. Looking historically, Slavery in the 1800s and locking Japanese Americans up during WWII come to mind. Looking at the present times, the examples of throwing people in jail for collecting rain water comes to mind. These Facebook stories usually have an abundance of "Well, don't break the law and you won't go to jail" comments. To wit: Darrow suggests that, philosophically, it is man's highest ideal to live a fulfilled life in peace, not coerced by government force. Endless volumes have been written, and countless lives been sacrificed in an effort to prove that one form of government is better than another; but few seem seriously to have considered the proposition that all government rests on violence and force, is sustained by soldiers, policemen and courts, and is contrary to the ideal peace and order which make for the happiness and progress of the human race. Great analogy comparing the rulers of ancient times- Basically the biggest man got a large club and enforced his rule as chieftain through force over his tribe. He used his power primarily to maintain power not for the betterment of those he ruled over. As one man cannot maintain power for long, he cronied his buddies as lieutenants to maintain power "and they were given a goodly portion of the fruits of power for the loyalty and help they lent their chief." The parallels to today are evident. From the early kings who, with blood-red hands, forbade their subjects to kill their fellow men, to the modern legislator, who, with the bribe money in his pocket, still makes bribery a crime, these rulers have ever made laws not to govern themselves but to enforce obedience on their serfs. CHAPTER 2: ARMIES AND NAVIES How is the authority of the state maintained? Darrow believes it to be maintained by force or the general threat of force. More generally, the power of armed men with all the 'modern implements of death". Specifically, 1) military personnel and 2) courts of justice, police and jails. I don't believe Darrow is being realistic (in his time, or ours) that all countries should not have a standing armies. Sure, idealistically, if there were no wars, these men and women could lead more productive lives and build skills and participate in tradecraft, but ever since Napoleonic times, we are required to have a standing army as long as our neighbor does. I don't see the world's militaries self-disintegrating any time soon. I also found his 'endless wars' rhetoric to be quite interesting considering he wrote it Pre World War I, World War II, Korean War, Sino-Russo War, Vietnam War, Lebanon, Granada, Tanker War, Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, War on Terrorism, etc. The world hadn't seen nothin' yet! The nation that would today disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrung from its hostile and unwilling serfs. Overall, I agree with the travesties of war, but don't agree with it's pragmatic to think everyone will demilitarize. CHAPTER 3: THE PURPOSE OF ARMIES But in reality the prime reason for all the armies of the world is that soldiers and militia may turn their guns upon their unfortunate countrymen when the owners of the earth shall speak the word. That this is the real purpose of standing armies and warlike equipment is plain to all who have eyes to see. We can see how military equipment has been appropriated to our police forces (Thanks War on Drugs!) but I think the premise Darrow is extolling is something different. But thinking one caused the other is a fallacy of 'Post hoc ergo propter hoc'. Because the rooster crows as dawn, and then the sun rises at dawn, does not mean the rooster causes the sun to rise. That the military is to be called on to directly suppress the free people isn't something that we've seen consistently. I mean, the National Guard is called sometimes for riot control, but Darrow's fears haven't been consistently witnessed throughout the passing of time. CHAPTER 4: CIVIL GOVERNMENT As society reaches the industrial stage, it is easier and costs less waste of energy for the ruling class to maintain its supremacy through the intricate forms and mazes of civil government, than through the direct means of soldiers and guns. Civil governments, like military governments, are instituted and controlled by the ruling class. Their purpose is to keep the earth and its resources in the hands of those who directly and indirectly have taken it for themselves. Darrow begins to build the case of morality here. Just because the courts are decreeing something, it must be obeyed at the threat of impounding property, kidnapping and imprisonment of men or, in some cases, killing the offender. ... the will of the sovereign is law, and the law is made for the benefit of the ruler, not the ruled. Darrow says that even a newly established government receives the historical laws and decrees 'based upon the old notions of properties and rights that were made to serve the rulers' previous. But I find that lazy (mostly because I'm a pro-property rights). Sometimes those are inherited because they are superior based on merit. I love his description of Lobbyists. The man who possesses one sort of power, as, for instance, political privilege, is very friendly to the class who possess another sort, as, for instance, wealth, and this community of interest naturally and invariably arrays all the privileged classes against the weak. I wish that Darrow, instead of just criticizing the natural tendency for some men to desire to rule over others, he could provide some solutions other than 'We should just all live without government and its evils!'. Order is more important than liberty, and at all costs order must be enforced upon the many. Chapter 5 "All punishment and violence is largely mixed with the feeling of revenge, - from the brutal father who strikes his helpless child, to the hangman who obeys the orders of the judge; with every man who lays violent unkind hands upon his fellow the prime feeling is that of hatred and revenge" ^^ and this is what I have against retributive justice. "In some inconceivable manner it is believed that when this punishment follows, justice has been done. But by no method of reasoning can it be shown that the injustice of killing one man is retrieved by the execution of another, or that the forcible taking of property is made right by confining some human being in a pen" "To punish a human being simply because he has committed a wrongful act, without any thought of good to follow, is vengeance pure and simple, and more detestable and harmful than any casual isolated crime". “Such acts as these would almost never be repeated. Genuine repentance follows most really vicious acts, but repentance, however genuine, gives no waiver of punishment.” Do you all feel that it is entirely the act of imprisonment itself and nothing in any violent criminal, whether by nature or nurture, that leads to recidivism? I don't know how it was in 1903, but I recently watched a few minutes of OJ Simpson's bail hearing. His repentance definitely did not waive his sentence, but i think it had a lot to do with his early release. “The safety aimed at through punishment is not meant the safety for the individual, but it is contended that the fact that one person is punished for an act deters others from the commission of similar unlawful acts; it is obvious that there is a large class who are not deterred by these examples, for the inmates of prisons never grow less . . . " I am not for locking in people in cages (nor for the death penalty) but I never thought of imprisonment as a deterrent. If there were any point to it at all, I think it would be to prevent that particular individual from being able to violate others' rights (except perhaps other inmates). If so, then imprisonment is not motivated solely by cruelty and hate as Darrow claims. I did not realize his claim that public executions actually caused people to commit copycat crimes. I believe it but I wish he had actually documented this claim instead of just positing it. Chapter 6 "The last refuge of the apologist is that punishment is inflicted to prevent crime" "The theory that punishment is a preventive to unlawful acts does not seriously mean that it is administered to prevent the individual from committing a second or a third unlawful act." He goes one to talk about how if the punishment is to be a deterrent, then we should logically use only the cruelest methods of punishment, but we don't, so therefore how can we claim that the punishment is a deterrent? His point at the end of chapter VI that the state is constantly trying to "improve" prisons brings to my mind the prohibition in the Bill of Rights against cruel and unusual punishment. I find that a pretty problematic phrase, for who is to say that imprisonment itself is not cruel? I guess the fact that it is so common makes it not unusual. Chapter 7 Darrow discusses, as the chapter title states, the cause of crime, and says that we should ponder on that. I have long felt that this is an important thing to consider, and this is why I am so interested in restorative justice. I feel that we should seek out WHY this crime happened and work to fix that through psychological means if possible. I think he is making the case for nurture as the cause of criminal behavior rather than nature. As such he points to the fact that inmates tend to be poorer than non-inmates. However he throws "mentally deficient" in there as well which is more nature than nurture. He seems to be making a class warfare argument, but I think he overlooks the possibility that more poor convicts than wealthy convicts does not necessarily mean there are more poor criminals that wealthy. That could be a result of disparities in the criminal justice system itself that allow more wealthy people to get away with the crimes they commit. What do you think of his closing in that chapter? To wit: "The jail and the penitentiary are not the first institutions planted by colonists in a new country, or by pioneers in a new state. These pioneers go to work to till the soil, to cut down the forests, to dig the ore; it is only when the owning class has been established and the exploiting class grows up, that the jail and the penitentiary become fixed institutions, to be used for holding people in their place.” **Another class warfare argument**. But you could just as easily flip that. Perhaps it is not until the owning class is sufficiently established in a new settlement that there is enough stuff making it worth the while of the working class to try and steal, thus motivating the owning class to get around to building jails. Chapter 8 "Reason and Judgement as well as an almost endless array of facts have proven that crime is not without its cause. In showing its cause, its cure has been made plain. If the minds and energies of men were directed toward curing crime instead of brutally assaulting the victims of society, some progress might be made" "Nearly every crime would be wiped away in one generation by giving the criminal a chance. The life of a burglar, of a thief, of a prostitute, is not a bed of roses. Men and women are only driven to these lives after other means have failed."
Chapters 9-12
For a trial lawyer, Darrow sure has plenty of criticism for trial by jury. I am looking forward to the part where we get to his alternative. "He cannot understand how a so-called thief should have forcibly taken a paltry sum. He cannot conceive that he, himself, could under any circumstances have done the like.” Not sure if that is universally true. Don't judges frequently consider mitigating circumstances in sentencing? In the film "Inherit The Wind" the jury found Cates guilty, but the judge fined him only one hundred dollars causing Brady to drop dead. Chapter 13-15 I think in the Afterword Riggenbach gives Darrow entirely too much credit when he writes: “This illustrates the extent to which the Clarence Darrow of 1902 was on pretty much the same wavelength as the Murray Rothbard of 80 years later.” On the contrary, I submit that Darrow was the anti-Rothbard and that Riggenbach credits Darrow for things Rothbard wrote but that Darrow did not. Here he comes blatant what was hinted at in the previous chapters- “Most of the laws governing the taking and obtaining of property, which constitute the great burden of our penal code, are arbitrary acts, whose sole purpose is to keep the great mass of property in the hands of the rulers and exploiters and to send to jail those who help themselves and who have no other means within their power." What he is advocating here is closer to anarcho-communism than anarcho-capitalism and would prevent me from ever recommending this book, despite some of the good points he makes about the state and criminal justice earlier. “These crimes are burglary, larceny, obtaining property by false pretenses, extortion, and the like. The jails and penitentiaries of every nation in the world are filled to overflowing with men and women who have been charged with committing crimes against property.” I don't know about 1903, but I would have no complaint if that were actually true today. But actually they are filled with victims of the drug war and people who have committed only various "crimes" against the state. The way he concludes chapter 13 and chapters 14 and 15 are completely at odds with Rothbard's analysis of property rights in *New Liberty*. Chapter 16 was a big letdown Here Darrow claims to offer his alternative to what he spent the last dozen chapters insisting does not work. His alternative amounts to ending punishment and adopting kindness instead. But he offers no concrete examples of how that operate in practice. Say you are a parent and someone pre meditatively rapes and murders your children. What would Darrow say should be done with the offender. Certainly not put them on trial because no one is qualified to sit in judgement nor understand the perpetrator's woes. Apparently the victims' parents are just supposed to show the perpetrator love and kindness. Riggenbach: “I won’t leave you with the impression that Clarence Darrow was an early, unsung Rothbardian, because he wasn’t.” **Talk about an understatement!** Summary There are some quotes in the book I like, especially in the first four chapters when he is trashing the state. But I have previously outlined my criticisms: 1. It is more a polemic than expository. He posits a lot of things without making an argument for them, citing examples to prove his case etc. 2. He spends chapters critiquing the criminal justice system, generating anticipation for his alternative, yet when he gets to that point, there really is not much substance at all. He COULD have advocated restorative justice, sure, but he really did not. 3. In the final two chapters he advocates class warfare - the forced redistribution of the property of the wealthy. Initially I had hoped that this might at least be a book I could recommend to the left to help shake their confidence in the state, but ultimately it is not a book I would comfortable recommending to anyone. Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
Who should determine the course of our lives? There is no shortage of people who aim to control others, imposing their will and restricting choice through the force of government.
Self Control or State Control? You Decide by Dr. Tom G. Palmer is the Libertarian Book Club's selection for the month of May. Below is a curated selection of our thoughts and notable quotes from the book. Join our Facebook Group as we seek to learn more about Libertarianism. We are a monthly book club for anyone who wants to learn more about Libertarianism. We will discuss each book's chapter/section in separate posts, so everyone will be able to read along at their own pace. We typically also focus on books which are available for free so that everyone can participate. Chapter 1
I highlighted a good deal in this chapter and I'm sure everyone will excuse me for the heavy quote pasting.
"Free people are not subservient, but neither are they uncontrolled. They control themselves. Taking control of your life is an act of both freedom and responsibility" "Unsurprisingly, they consider freedom frightening. As a consequence, many have believed that order and virtue must be imposed at the expense of freedom. They equate responsibility with submission to the commands of others." "One can never legislate or choose the outcomes directly; all legislators or rulers can do is to change the incentives that participants in social interactions face. Thus, actions may be outlawed because the legislators think they're bad" I think this chapter does a nice job of explaining a few things: 1) My life is mine. Not anyone else's. I really enjoy endurance sports (MMA, bike touring, hiking marathons, and most recently the dreaded Barkley Marathon ("the race that eats its young"). I can not rely on government to keep me safe; it is my responsibility - and mine alone - to keep myself safe. If I'm stupid, then I reap the consequences for that, if I am smart; the benefits. 2) No victim, no crime. I hate drugs. Hate them. I don't want to be around them. I don't want to watch others do them. With that said, it is immoral for me to push this belief on to others, we must look at the proof that the law hasn't prevented drug usage (arguably, it's only gotten worse and created a violent black market around it). There are a few other highlights I liked quite a bit: "Self-control is never perfect, but state control is no improvement" "A harmonious society rests on respect for the freedom of each member" "The rules of the road facilitate the transportation of millions of people to millions of different destinations, all without a central power issuing commands to them; they're not perfect, but rather simple rules of the road help many millions of people to avoid collisions and arrive where they want to be every minute of every day" 'But without police at every street corner, why would anyone follow the law?', the statist asks. Simple: it's in everyone's best interest to follow the rues of the road. Chapter 2
Clearly, the nanny state and the desire to protect us all from ourselves is counter-productive. It seems that society can - and would - flourish much more in a society that allowed individuals to make their own choices.
"The Founding Fathers believed in the unalienable human right to liberty, but they knew it depended on personal responsibility. To be freed from a tyrant's rule, men had to be able to rule themselves: that truth seemed self-evident" "In workplaces, managers scoring high in self-control were rated more favorably by their subordinates as well as by their peers. People with good self-control seemed exceptionally good at forming and maintaining secure, satisfying attachments to other people. They were shown to be better at emphasizing with others and considering thing from other people's perspectives" "When she tested prisoners and then tracked them for years after their release, she found that the ones with low self-control were most likely to commit more crimes and return to prison" Chapter 3
As will be covered more in future chapters, the welfare state brings a host of problems: namely that it keeps the poor, poor.
I really don't like anti-welfare arguments centered around the belief of "they're just lazy" (this is as old as at least the Victorian period. Check out the TV mini-series "Victorian Slum House") as there is a lot more to it than that and the negatives of the welfare state expand much more than just that "some people are too lazy to work." As an aside, has anyone read The Human Cost of Welfare: How the System Hurts the People It's Supposed to Help"? "We are throwing these people a life preserver to keep them afloat, but not pulling them into the boat. They are effectively creating and perpetuating a dependent class". "One of the first things our welfare system does is make people poorer so that they may qualify for benefits. Qualifying for benefits means spending down assets and savings, and that includes vehicles, which is especially problematic". Chapter 5
This chapter breaks down how only Property Rights can prevent overfishing. "Fisheries using Individual Fishing Quotas (IFQs) in places ranging from Iceland to New Zealand have seen fish populations stabilize and even grow along with fishing incomes". But... but .... without fishing licenses controlled by the government, that's impossible!
Additionally, this chapter elaborates on some things Murray Rothbard wrote in New Liberty. "Environmental problems are generally conflicting claims over resources and how they are used. Property rights help to resolve those conflicts by providing a legal institution that prioritizes particular uses—the uses that the owner prioritizes, in the time frame that the owner chooses. For some environmental problems, such as chemical pollution in a self-contained lake, individual ownership of the land that includes the lake is likely to give the owner incentives to maintain the lake’s quality, either for his/her own consumption value or because pollution would reduce the market value of the property." Chapter 7
My favorite chapter thus far! Contrary to a point I made about an earlier chapter, this one does seem to advocate for a stateless society, or at least nearly so:
"It is often assumed that the Catholic Church, because of its social teaching, is committed to high levels of state intervention and regulation. However, in its most authoritative document on such matters, it states: "Another task of the state is that of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector. However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the state but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society.”" One wonders why in this quote "sole" could not replace "primary?" "The reaction to the financial crash of 2007–2008 provides an indication of how state regulatory institutions are created and operate. In the wake of the crash, tens of thousands of pages of regulations were written and promulgated. It was estimated that the Dodd–Frank Act in the United States, with its associated regulations, would come to thirty thousand pages. In 2011, some 14,200 new financial regulations were created worldwide. That trend was underway well before the financial crash. It is often asserted that there was a period of deregulation before the financial crash and that the crash was a consequence of deregulation. That is not so, certainly not in the United Kingdom." Not just in the US either. The evidence is quite strong that systems of state regulation have not been successful. Not only did the comprehensive systems of financial regulation that developed in the United Kingdom from 1986 and in the United States from the 1930s not prevent the financial crash, but in many ways they were contributory causes that exacerbated and spread the crisis globally. Many forms of mistaken and reckless behavior that led to the failures of banks and other financial institutions in 2007–2008 were encouraged by regulation." Boy, you can say that again. The dominant historical narrative suggests that, before the twentieth century, urban development was chaotic and that each property owner and developer could do what they wished without regard to the impact of their actions on anyone else. The result, supposedly, was terrible slums, and ugly unplanned development. (A visit to such places as Bath and Bloomsbury might raise doubts about that narrative, of course.)" I was in Bath about a year and a half ago and can confirm. I also love the point made on pages 89-90 how urban sprawl was caused by "muh roads" being taken over by government from private turnpike trusts. "Interestingly, the same people who advance that account also often complain about “suburban sprawl” in the United States without stopping to reflect that such “sprawl” is associated with and largely caused by governmental regulatory regimes. Complaints about the ugliness and poor quality of public and private buildings produced under the pre-1948 regime in Britain are also puzzling when one considers the poor quality of so many buildings that have been produced since that time." Chapter 10
"A free person makes her own choices and manages her own life; an unfree person's life is managed by someone else"
"We are free persons, rather than mere material objects, because we can be held accountable for our acts. We are distinguished as individuals by what we do - the very things for which we are responsible. Responsibility for our actions and the freedom to choose for ourselves foster social cooperation, coordination, and harmony, and when our freedom and responsibility are overridden, social order is disrupted and conflict replaces harmony." "...welfare states tax to provide (frequently monopolistically) through political means what could be provided and chosen voluntarily - from retirement income, to medical care, to housing, to education - and in the process induce people to reduce their savings, engage in riskier behavior, abandon voluntary mutual aid organizations, and pay less attention to securing their own well-being and that of their families and communities." "Replacing self-control with state control rarely generates any of the benefits claimed by its enthusiasts and always generates other, unintended, consequences." Overall
Self Control or State Control introduces the reader to a number of different concepts that they may not be aware of in which the State controls us and the life we wish to live for ourselves. Most of the 11 chapters are written by a different authors, but they all compliment one another well.
This book covers a range of topics, such as the welfare state (how and why it has failed), business regulations, will power, the philosophy of individualism, and others. Overall, I found the book to be an interesting read, and I really liked that each chapter contained numerous references (I'm quite the stickler for this. Without references, a book such as this isn't worth much). I think that this is a fantastic read for those that are new to Libertarianism, and I believe that it is especially good for those that are crossing over from a previously Left-wing ideology. 4½ stars overall, since I found some parts of the chapters discussing individualism to be somewhat dry. Still a great book and a suggested read! Follow libertyLOL on your favorite social media sites:FacebookYoutube Tumblr Pintrest Countable: Government Made Simple Steemit blog on a blockchain Patreon Gab.ai libertyLOL's Liberty Blog RSS Feed We also run a couple twitterbots which provide great quotes and book suggestions: Murray Rothbard Suggests Tom Woods Suggests Jason Stapleton Suggests Progressive Contradictions MORE FROM LIBERTYLOL:
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